Gorgeous morning in Phoenix so I walked around on a Sunday morning near our hotel downtown. Very quiet and not many people around, except for occasional street people and farmer/conventioneers. I did find a lovely little pocket of urban pioneer hipness at the Public Market Cafe, just north of the convention center area.
The place was bustling with a mixed crowd, families, millennials, older folks, all drawn to a place with good hearty comfort food (and what looked like great bloody Mary’s.) How great was it to sit on the open air patio under a tin roof by a fireplace, estimg a light breakfast. Later I walked a little further north to the Roosevelt row art district which is still in process, with stucco bungalows in various stages of restoration or recreation as galleries or little shops and new modern loft complexes.
The development is still spotty — at that attractive stage where you sense change is happening and you feel a sense of discovery.
Early SoHo, I call it, harkening back to the days in the 1970s when I used to visit artists with my mom in the emerging soho district of New York, long before it became overrun with artists and over commercialized.
Dad and I stopped briefly for lunch in Scottsdale at a pretty place called Arcadia farms, again eating on the outdoor patio. 79 degrees today! nice change from subzero temps in Iowa.
Loved my maiden voyage to the Huntington Collections and Gardens in San Marino near Pasadena, a spectacularly situated series of landscaped gardens (Japanese, Chinese, children’s, Australian….) and galleries (my favorite was an exhibit of early American folk art).
My sister-in-law Heather (named here for her bemusement) and I drifted through one lovely setting after another, catching up, enjoying the greenery, flowers, huge trees, even the dramatic white-grey clouds over the mountains off in the distance. We had a light delicious bite of scallion pancakes and mushroom-stuffed spring roles by the reflecting pool outside in the Chinese garden and enjoyed the excellent gift shop (where I discovered that a Nashville painter Vicki Sawyer, whose whimsical bird portraits I bought several years ago at an east Nashville gallery, has become a brand- I bought napkins, coasters and cards with her birds on them!)
Other highlights include seeing my brother and his fun new digs at the new Nickelodeon building. (He writes for the hit kids show “The Loud House”) and dinner from Zankou zof takeout chicken, hummus, tabbouli, rice with my cousin Scott!
TakeBetsywithyou 